


Superstition

by Rina (rinadoll)



Category: Green Gables Fables
Genre: Community: picfor1000, F/M, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinadoll/pseuds/Rina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilbert can't understand why Anne Shirley won't like him, until it becomes clear.</p><p>It had nothing to do with the ladder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superstition

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 13th annual Picture is Worth 1000 Words challenge, where you write a story exactly 1000 words long inspired by the assigned photo. 
> 
> My pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/karamanis/1106389375/in/photostream/lightbox/

Gilbert is not superstitious. He’s going to be a doctor, for God’s sake. 

While he was in Toronto, a building downtown was painted bright red. He walked to school that first day with Ruby and Josie, three fitting across the sidewalk until they reached the ladder and junk still propped there. They went around and he went under while Ruby screeched about bad luck. He scoffed at her.

Except that day, he meets red-haired Anne Shirley and it’s all bad luck from there. 

He’s never seen anyone like her before. She’s so beautiful that everyone pales next to her glow. He tries every trick in his book to get her attention. He never realized before how few tricks he has - did he seriously pull her pigtail? That, he regrets immediately - because he’s never had to use many before. He’s comfortably aware that he’s considered one of the best looking boys in school. Girls _want_ his attention. For Anne, he has to up his game.

More bad luck. She hates him. The more he tries, the worse it gets. He doesn’t get it. He watches her videos every week, loving her brains and beauty. She’s larger than life. She’s brought a spark to Avonlea that he hadn’t realized was missing. He imagines what it would be like to be with her, and be on her videos. Be part of her life. 

And then he finally does it. He swoops in, rescuing her, ends up on a video. And she still hates him.

He doesn’t understand why. She’s sensitive, he gets that now, but she’s smart and friendly, warm and outgoing. Why is that never directed at him? 

He finally levels with her. He’s run out of tricks, so he goes with honesty. It’s all he has, and she still rejects him. 

He has to be some kind of masochist, because he watches that video over and over. Josie accuses him of taking to his bed, but he just...regroups. For a few days. Ruby and Josie try to draw him out, and while it’s easy to ignore Josie (she just wants the gossip), Ruby is harder to avoid. 

They spend hours on the phone and he feels better after talking with her, so he heads back to Twitter to reclaim his space. He brings out his fun facts, which always start conversations. He’s not expecting Anne’s subtweets, but hey - he got her attention. And he wants to keep it, so he subtweets back. It doesn’t stay fun for very long and he feels worse than he did before. 

Ruby doesn’t let him take to his bed again - NOT that he ever did, thank you - and they start making Starbucks in the park their thing. He knows Anne’s posting schedule, and avoids social media entirely. 

It’s two days before he caves. He rewatches the last video - it pops up when he types in you and again, he is a masochist - and then the new. It’s not what he expected. He thought maybe she’d complain about him again, or continue their subtweet fight, but instead she’s subdued. Melancholy. He’s stricken by the idea that he might have a part in that, maybe stained what she hoped would be her first good Thanksgiving.

He thinks of Anne as sunshine and cheer and energy, a force of nature. He never really thought about why she moved to Avonlea in the middle of the school year, he was just glad she did. She refers to her social worker every now and again, but not so often that it really registers. The Cuthberts are her family, and she fits in so seamlessly, it’s like she’s been there for years. 

But she hasn’t. She’s been sad and lonely and ignored and unloved, none of which makes any sense with the Anne he knows. 

The next logical point would be, maybe he doesn’t know her. 

It’s midnight on a Friday night and he’s cued up her first video before he thinks twice. He’s not sure he’d ever watched them all, or if he'd started with his entrance into her life. 

He watches from her perspective this time, not his. He’s been so determined to win her over, he didn’t consider her wishes. She’s right, he has been disrespectful. She’d been very clear about what she wanted from him, but he only gave her what he wanted. No wonder she couldn’t stand him. 

He won’t hurt her again. He’ll give her space, let her take the lead. She knows where he stands, and if she decides to forgive him, he’ll be right there. If she doesn’t, his life will be duller but it won’t end. In the meantime, he’ll treat her like any classmate and learn who she is, not who she is to him. He’ll move on, maybe date again.

When she compares their grades, he figures it’s safe to study with her. Nope. He backs off.

When Diana says she thinks Anne wants to be his friend, he can’t resist tweeting about his (glorious, wonderful) missing pencil. He gets away with it. 

When his now least favorite ex posts her version of the benefit, he almost gives up. Instead, he grits his teeth, yells at her a little about respect, and tries to get through a very stressful month, now made even more so. Everything feels pointless. 

Until Jane’s party, where she slowly stops avoiding him. Where she not only returns his Christmas wishes, but leaves it in her video. 

But none of that even holds a candle to her anniversary video about Avonlea, which features him, in her life, on her own terms. It’s the breakthrough he’s been waiting for, he’s sure of it. 

He knows better than to think they’re anything like friends yet, but now hoping doesn’t feel ridiculous. 

It wasn’t really bad luck that started him and Anne off wrong, or bad luck that his teasing finally came back to bite him. 

But he’s still not walking under any more ladders. Just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> Anne and Gilbert were my first OTP, as a wee little 8 year old Rina. So when I was watching GGF #28 and Anne pointed out that he'd been rude and disrespectful, I cringed. She was right - Gil had been acting like a Nice Guy, entirely disregarding Anne’s feelings in favor of his own. It made me uncomfortable and I thought about it for a long time. 
> 
> So when I got my assignment, I tied her red hair to this red wall and helped Gil on his path to becoming the good guy we all knew he'd grow up to be.


End file.
